Implanon removal - Waiting to Try to Conceive

The date is set, the satan stick is being removed on Friday the 22nd. I am nervous. It's not being removed to TTC, I am having issues with weight gain (like I have done EVERYTHING to lose weight, even weight loss shakes and I keep gaining. I'm the heaviest I have ever been). Throw in all my other issues and the doctor wants me to go off all hormonal BC for 3 months at least. So I need help with non hormonal birth control options. I've just bought a basal thermometer, how does one use this? Under the tongue, arm? I'm also going to buy a heap of IC ovulation sticks I guess. My partner is really grumbly about using condoms, he says its like you cant feel anything at all. What other options are there? Spermicide? Diaphragm? Any tips?

I HATE hormonal birth control! I've never used implanon, but I've had horrible experiences with birth control pills. I have a non-hormonal IUD (para guard) which has been great. Probably not worth using if you'll be TTC within the next year, but maybe an option to talk to your doctor about in the future?

I just started using my basal body thermometer again, trying to see where my cycles are at for TTC soon. I temp under my tongue, but I know some ladies temp vaginally. Not sure if that's more accurate or not. Just make sure you temp at the same time every day, that it's a time you will have had at least 3 hours of sleep straight, and you move as little as possible before temping. Keep it right by you bed and don't get up to go to the bathroom or anything. This system only helps you identify after you've already ovulated though, so it won't be helpful in the first months as far as avoiding goes. It's great to help you establish a pattern over time though.

Have you looked at all into saliva ferning kits? It's a microscope that supposed to help you see patterns in your saliva that can identify an upcoming ovulation. From my understanding it doesn't work for all women, but they're not very expensive so it might be worth trying! I got one but I'm not sure if I can really see the patterns. I'm on the fence as to wether it's really helpful or not.

Good luck with all of this! I'm glad to hear you're getting the implanon out! Sounds like it will be much better for you.

I've never used hormonal birth control. DH and I usually use condoms but if I'm temping I don't mind after O not using them. I usually O around 12-14 but I've ovulated as soon as the day after my period (usually CD8) so if he wants it before I O that's how we handled it. You can try a diaphragm too.

As said about, tracking ovulation is great but it will NOT prevent pregnancy. Sperm can live inside a person for days. So if you have sex a few days BEFORE ovulation, you can get pregnant. Temping and tracking won't let you know until after you've ovulated.

I used hormonal birth control on and off over the years, starting from the time I was a teen, until about 11 years ago when Depo really started messing with my body, bad. It wasn't until then that I started looking into hormonal birth control and saw it for the really bad thing it is. At that point I swore off ALL hormonal birth control, whether it was safe to take with my history or not.

I highly suggest the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. I never tempted or charted but there use to be a lot of women in TTC that did so. I have considered temping and charting by my sleep pattern use to be horribly random, plus I was nursing, and other stuff so I never felt it would work well for me. Not to mention you really should be on some sort of other method at first, so you can learn what is what and when it happens. I would ask about temping and charting over in TTC. There's a lot a TCOYF site: http://www.tcoyf.com/

Basically, with any fertility awareness method, the more signs you use, the more accurate.

I have used OPKs over the years, but never to prevent pregnancy. They don't work like that. You already need to be preventing before you get the positive to indicate ovulation. They are very good for determining about the time you ovulate, while preventing with another method, so you can kind of tweak your timing or method of prevention.

Most recently I/we have used the calendar method. In a lot of years of using some form of the calendar method (and I have used a lot of variations even religiously checking CP and CM at one point) I have had one unplanned pregnancy (this one). When I was doing it on my own, without the fertility app I used, I/we were using condoms to prevent on days 10-20. When I bought the fertility app I inputted all my data, including the two or three years of cycles including those where I knew when I ovulated, and it would give me it's own fertile window during which we would prevent with condoms. The cycle we conceived (April) I ovulated earlier than my app thought I would, apparently, and it just so happens we had sex around that time even though in previous cycles the app didn't mark that day my fertile day we had sex and didn't conceive. So, yeah, don't do that.
Some other non-hormonal methods I considered are the Paraguard IUD but I didn't feel it was the right thing for me, no matter how many times over the last bunch of years, I considered it. Different strokes for different folks so that may be something you want to look into to see if it'd work for you.

Spermicide has a very high failure rate unless you use it with another method, like condom or diaphragm.

I think diaphragm is worth a through review for you. You never know! As long as you use it the right way, every time, it's failure rate is pretty low (6 out of 100).

Something else I considered was the Lady Comp. https://www.lady-comp.com/
It's more forgiving as far as charting goes, all natural, and about as effective as condoms, but the price tag is a whopper. If my boyfriend doesn't get the big V sometime before this baby is born I think this is the way I will go, regardless of price tag.

ETA: Oh and tell your hubby they make all sorts of condoms now. Go to a pharmacy or condom site and order a bunch of different random ones...they make them out of different materials, different thicknesses, different brands, etc. etc. And keep trying one after another until he finds the one that feels the best. If he's going to moan about them and doesn't want to use them, then he needs to realize, particularly since you really don't track anything with your fertility right now and your body is kind of out of whack because of the hormonal BC, that the risk of pregnancy is pretty high.

A cervical cap is another idea, similar to a diaphragm or menstrual cap.
We still HATE condoms too but do "OK" with the super thin non-latex ones.
Once you get your fertile times down, which may take all of 3 months or more, you can just not use a barrier outside of the non-fertile days anyway, that is what we do.
Honestly, we use PNP during fertile times LOL. BUT DH is a pro unless I tell him we are good to go.